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Let's not take citizenship for granted | Opinion

Updated on March 2, 2017 at 2:12 PMPosted on March 2, 2017 at 9:29 AM

Delgado: As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Puerto Ricans' American citizenship, I ask not only Puerto Ricans but every American to think about what citizenship means. (Photo by Eric Gay | Associated Press)

"Immigrants, we get the job done!" -- Lin-Manuel Miranda, from the musical "Hamilton"

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Jones-Shafroth Act providing Puerto Ricans with American statutory citizenship, meaning that citizenship was granted by an act of Congress and not by the Constitution.

In another time and under different circumstances, this anniversary would probably have gotten little attention, as average people take their citizenship for granted. But this year, the anniversary takes on more significance because our country is embroiled in the contentious debate over immigration and who should be granted citizenship.

While technically not immigrants, Puerto Ricans are migrants, as in people who move from one place to another within a country. However, the feelings Puerto Ricans have always had is that of cultural immigrants. Our language, culture and customs were different, and Puerto Rico was viewed as a possession of the United States.

The history of Puerto Ricans in mainland America has been as diverse and as conflicted as the story of America itself, running from one end of the political spectrum to the other; from Independista Lolita Lebron firing her semi-automatic pistol in the U.S. House of Representatives and shouting "!Viva Puerto Rico Libre!" to right-wing Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Pedro Augusto del Valle's formation of the "Defenders of the American Constitution, "whose main goal was to purge the United States of any communist influence in the 1950s.

I can include my own family's example of this charged narrative, from my uncle's six-year sentence in Atlanta and Danbury federal prisons for his participation in the Puerto Rican independence movement (from my father's side of the family) to my cousin's 25-year career as an FBI agent (my mother's side of the family). The story would make a great script for an HBO series.

As with many other groups, our journey as Americans has brought both successes and failures. We have been on the mainland long enough to have a third and fourth generation of middle-class professionals outside the inner cities. We can point to role models such as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Pulitzer Prize-winner Lin-Manuel Miranda. But we also understand that we have a population still mired in poverty and poor education.

In 2014, New Jersey had the third-most Puerto Ricans in the United States, behind Florida and New York, according to Centro, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter, the City University of New York. Puerto Ricans also make up the largest concentration of Latinos in New Jersey. Of the state's 1.7 million Latinos, Puerto Ricans account for 468,200, or 27 percent -- with the largest populations in Hudson and Essex counties.

Puerto Ricans who have settled in New Jersey have done better than those who stayed on the island. In 2014, 17 percent of Puerto Rican families were living in poverty in New Jersey compared with a poverty rate of 43 percent in Puerto Rico, according to Centro. The benefits of living on the mainland are clear.

As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Puerto Ricans' American citizenship, I ask not only Puerto Ricans but every American to think about what citizenship means. We should not take this bond we have with our nation for granted in light of what past and present immigrants have sacrificed to enter this country.

We've all come here searching for a better life for ourselves and our family. We are large, Walt Whitman told us, containing multitudes, full of contradictions. That's America. Let us work together. The American cup is always half-full, never half-empty.

Sam Delgado, a retired U.S. Marine, is chairman of the Newark Regional Business Partnership and a Felician University trustee.